We are all, to varying degrees, hurt by the plight of Gilad Shalit.

                There are those who feel that Israel should make the prisoner exchange needed to secure his release. Others say it is too dangerous to do so.

                Yet others would argue that if Israel was really far harsher in its treatment of the Palestinians then this sort of thing wouldn't happen because we would be feared by one and all.

                What we'd like to put on the table, not that this will solve very much today for the Shalits is why there is a problem, that is, really why. Let's trace this thing back before there were Palestinians in Israeli jails and before there was a war in Gaza.

                Quite simply Gilad, and all the other prisoners and all the soldiers and all the civilians who have died and suffered for close to hundred years now, are the victims of the refusal of two peoples to make peace with each other; two peoples who refuse to think outside the box of their own suffering and narrative of total victory.

                It is this collective series of refusals -- on both sides for a hundred years, that has caused all the ongoing suffering.

                So if we are really to find the source, that is the real source of these two peoples' path of death and destruction, of which Gilad's plight is a another chapter among so many, Jews and Palestinians alike need look no further than the mirror. It is these two peoples together who are the sole cause of their own suffering

                Nothing will change until all will look and then seek to alter their appearances, disfigured as they are now by hate and fear.